Malabrigo Spin

Three years ago when we were in St. Paul I bought a Malabrigo braid of Merino Wool fiber. Following is a photo I found from October 2023 showing the braid laid out on the floor with some yarn in coordinating colorways. Not sure what I was thinking at that time. Yes, I do like purple.

Fiber prepared this way is very densely packed. When I was a new spinner 20 years ago I had little formal instruction in how to spin, especially as it related to the different ways fiber can be prepared. More recently I have learned there is a whole category of instruction called “Fiber Prep”. There are entire classes at the School of Sweet Georgia on this topic.

Trying to spin directly off a tightly packed braid is possible, but the experience will be more pleasant and the results more consistent if it has been through some kind of process to loosen up the fiber. My method has been to peel off narrow strips and then do some pre-drafting (kind of like stretching it out) before spinning. I had heard that another method is to card the fiber. At Fiber Day in the fall of 2024 I tried doing this with the Ellison’s big electric drum carder.

I learned quickly that carding this braid was not the right method if one wants to preserve all the pretty colors.

All the colors mixed together turn into a shade of gray.

Following is a photo showing two bobbins of the fiber spun up with all the colors preserved, and part of a third one with the blended gray fiber. I have been working on spinning thinner singles, with the goal of creating yarn that can be used on my flat knitting machine, or even for knitting socks on my circular sock machine. It looked thin enough on the bobbins before plying.

Plying the two colorful singles yarn resulted in a jumble of colors.

I gently washed the plied yarn to set the twist and hung it up to dry.

After washing and drying, the yarn “bloomed”. It was more like worsted weight or even bulky, thicker than I expected it would be. Also, the overall effect was more greenish gray looking than the original braid.

The part of the braid that I had blended on the drum carder looked very grayish when plied. It is nice too, but the original bright colors are lost.

Following is another photo of the more colorful plied yarn in a basket.

I was hoping I could use this yarn for the School of Sweet Georgia Machine Knitting Hats class, but it may be too thick for the LK-150 machine. I will try it, to see what happens. This yarn may end up in a tub with other hand spun yarn that I do not know what to do with from the last 20 years.

Since starting this project, I have worked through a School of Sweet Georgia Spinning up a Level class where I learned more about controlling the thickness of the final yarn. With that knowledge, I hope that my next spin will end up thin enough for one of the knitting machines.